The Art of Connection: Reimagining Artist Support as Social Practice

From Fluxus to mutual aid - why artist support can be radical art practice

Aug 11, 2025

Looking at this through the lens of social practice art, I'm starting to see Shoebox Arts differently. Not as coaching or consulting, but as something more radical - a decade-long artwork about reimagining how artists support each other.

When Infrastructure Becomes Art

My friends and clients have called me "The Great Connector" for years, but I'm realizing that's actually describing my medium. Like how Rirkrit Tiravanija's medium was curry and conversation, or how Rick Lowe's medium was shotgun houses and community development¹, my medium is artist-to-artist relationships and the systems that either support or exclude us.

The social practice lineage is clear once you look for it. In the 1960s, Allan Kaprow was creating "Happenings" that broke down the wall between art and life². By the 1970s, artists like Mierle Laderman Ukeles were declaring maintenance work as art - she literally swept museum floors and called it performance³. Then came the institutional critique movement of the 1980s, where artists like Andrea Fraser performed as museum docents to expose how cultural institutions actually function⁴.

What I'm doing with Shoebox Arts sits right in this tradition, but it's addressing a different institution - the one that's supposed to help artists survive.

The Art is in the Alternative

When I started Shoebox PR a decade ago, I thought I was solving a practical problem. Artists needed help marketing their work, and I had the skills to do it. But looking back through a social practice lens, what I was actually doing was creating an alternative to the traditional gallery system that excludes so many of us.

The monthly critiques, the co-working sessions, the "speed dating studio visits" - these aren't just services. They're social sculptures⁵, to borrow Joseph Beuys' term. Each gathering reshapes how artists relate to each other and to their professional development. Instead of competing for the same gallery director's attention, we're creating our own networks of support and validation.

Pablo Helguera talks about social practice as "collaborative art-making that is dependent on social intercourse"⁶. That's exactly what happens when twenty artists show up to Shoebox Projects for a group critique. The art isn't just in what gets made - it's in the relationships formed, the barriers broken down, the alternative economy of care we create together.

Process Over Product (But Still Pay Rent)

Here's where social practice gets tricky in real life: how do you sustain community-building work without falling into the "exploitation disguised as opportunity" trap that Claire Bishop warns about⁷?

My solution has been to charge for some services while keeping others free. Members pay for ongoing support, but newcomers can attend events without cost. Artists pay for PR services, but they also get connected to opportunities I can't take on myself. It's not perfect, but it's an attempt to create sustainable mutual aid rather than just extractive capitalism dressed up as community care.

Tania Bruguera's concept of "Arte Útil" (Useful Art) keeps coming to mind⁸. She argues that some art should function like a tool - not just represent social issues but actually provide solutions. That's what I'm trying to do. The "art" isn't separate from the utility; the usefulness IS the art.

The Pedagogy Problem

There's definitely overlap between what I do and teaching, but social practice art has always been pedagogical. When Suzanne Lacy organized "The Crystal Quilt" with 430 older women in 1987⁹, she wasn't just making a performance - she was creating a platform for marginalized voices to be heard and for participants to learn from each other.

The difference between teaching and social practice is who holds the authority. In traditional education, knowledge flows from teacher to student. In social practice, everyone brings knowledge and everyone learns. When I facilitate a critique session, I'm not the expert dispensing wisdom - I'm creating the conditions for artists to support each other's development.

Grant Kester calls this "dialogical aesthetics" - art that emerges through conversation and collective meaning-making rather than individual expression¹⁰. That's what happens in our monthly meetings. The artwork is the collective intelligence that emerges when artists gather to problem-solve together.

Making the Invisible Visible

Hans Haacke spent decades exposing the economic forces behind art institutions¹¹. What I'm trying to expose is different but related: the isolation and resource scarcity that keeps artists from thriving. By creating visible alternatives - the membership program, the exhibition space, the professional development workshops - I'm making it clear that other ways of supporting artistic careers are possible.

This is why I get excited when members book shows after meeting at our events, or when artists collaborate after connecting through Call and Response. Those relationships are the artwork. The infrastructure that made them possible is the medium.

Why This Matters Even More Right Now

The art world is having a complicated moment. After years of institutions making public commitments to diversity and inclusion, we're watching those same commitments get quietly rolled back. Federal agencies are dismantling DEI programs, and arts organizations are following suit - either because funding demands it or because they never really meant it in the first place.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision is rippling through grant programs and exhibition opportunities. The structures that were supposed to level the playing field are being systematically dismantled, often by the same people who were happy to put up diversity statements on their websites.

This is exactly why alternative infrastructure matters. When institutions can't or won't create equitable access, we have to build it ourselves. Social practice isn't just an art movement - it's a survival strategy.

Andrea Fraser's research on museum board members' political donations showed us what we already suspected: the people funding our cultural institutions often work directly against the values those institutions claim to uphold¹². When the political winds shift, their true priorities become clear.

But grassroots networks are harder to defund or co-opt. When Shoebox Arts members support each other's careers, when Art and Cake covers artists who never get institutional attention, when Call and Response connects artists across geographic and cultural divides - that infrastructure exists independently of what's happening in government or museum boardrooms.

The Long Game

Most social practice projects are temporary - a performance, an installation, a community intervention that lasts weeks or months. What happens when the social practice IS building sustainable infrastructure? When the artwork spans a decade of relationship-building?

I think about Rick Lowe's Project Row Houses, which started in 1993 and is still running today¹³. Or Theaster Gates transforming buildings on Chicago's South Side into cultural centers¹⁴. These aren't just art projects that happen to last a long time - they're proposing that cultural infrastructure itself can be an artistic medium.

That's what Shoebox Arts has become: a long-term social sculpture about what artist support could look like if we designed it ourselves instead of waiting for institutions to change.

And honestly? Given what we're seeing happen to institutional support right now, building our own networks isn't just artistic practice - it's political necessity. The institutions were never going to save us anyway. But we might be able to save each other.

Community as Resistance

When I see Shoebox Arts members landing shows, getting press coverage, selling work, building careers outside traditional gatekeeping systems - that's not just professional development success. That's proof of concept for a more equitable way of organizing artistic community.

The personal is political, as we learned from 1970s feminism. But maybe the community is artistic too. Maybe the way we choose to support each other, the systems we build together, the infrastructure we maintain - maybe that's all part of the artwork of reimagining what the art world could become.

Especially when the larger culture is actively working to make things worse for marginalized artists, the act of creating alternatives becomes even more urgent. Social practice isn't just about making art - it's about making the world we want to live and work in.

Shoebox Arts membership is always open to new artists ready to experiment with what mutual support can look like. Because sometimes the most radical art practice is just showing up for each other consistently, especially when the institutions won't.

Footnotes:

Rick Lowe, Project Row Houses:

https://projectrowhouses.org/

Allan Kaprow, "Happenings in the New York Scene" (1961)
Mierle Laderman Ukeles, "Maintenance Art Manifesto" (1969)
Andrea Fraser, "Museum Highlights" (1989)
Joseph Beuys developed the concept of "social sculpture" in the 1970s
Pablo Helguera, "Education for Socially Engaged Art" (2011)
Claire Bishop, "Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship" (2012)
Tania Bruguera, Arte Útil:

https://www.arte-util.org/

Suzanne Lacy, "The Crystal Quilt" (1987)
Grant Kester, "Conversation Pieces: Community and Communication in Modern Art" (2004)
Hans Haacke's institutional critique work spans from the 1970s to present
Andrea Fraser, "2016 in Museums, Money, and Politics" (2018)
Project Row Houses continues today: